Purpose – To examine the state of logistics and supply chain management (SCM) research in the last five years from the standpoint of existing methodologies. The state of research is assessed by examining the research design, number of hypothesis testing, research methods, data analysis techniques, data sources, level of analysis and country of authors.Design/methodology/approach – The review of SCM and logistics research is based on 442 papers published from 1999 to 2003 in the following three academic journals Journal of Business Logistics, International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, and Supply Chain Management: An International Journal.Findings – Major findings show that there is an increase in the direct observation methods like case studies. In general, the research is more interpretive in nature. Survey method is still holding the highest position. More advanced techniques are being used for data analysis in empirical studies and there has been an increase in hypothesis tes...

Review of supply chain management and logistics research

Purpose – Business renovation, the effective utilisation of information technology and the role of business process modelling and simulation, are all vital in supply chain integration projects. This paper aims to show through a combination of these methods how the performance of the supply chain can be improved with the renovation and integration of processes at various tiers in the chain and by the sharing of information between companies.Design/methodology/approach – Simulation‐based methodology for measuring the benefits of the creation and renovation of business process models combines the methodology of developing process models and its simulation with the simulation of supply and demand. A procurement process in the oil/retail petrol industry is examined in a case study.Findings – Using the proposed methodology, different business process models can be investigated and simulated. The benefits for each company involved in the presented case are substantial and can be estimated through a simulation. S...

Process approach to supply chain integration

Extending the concept of supply chain:: The effective management of value chains

Purpose – Value chain analysis (VCA) can expose strategic and operational misalignments within chains, and the consequential misallocation of resources, and hence opportunities for improvements which create value and economic sustainability. This paper's purpose is to argue why and how VCA needs to integrate the social and environmental aspects of sustainability in pursuit of sustainable competitive advantage.Design/methodology/approach – Based on a review of existing methods and case studies, the paper proposes three dimensions of VCA, which illustrate the flaws in narrow tools, and the need to broaden the boundaries of VCA, the interpretation of “value” and relationships along the chain in order to highlight opportunities for creating sustainable value chains.Findings – To date VCA has largely focused on economic sustainability and paid inadequate attention to social and environment consequences of firm behaviour and the (re) allocation of resources within and between firms in the chain. This risks prod...

Dimensions of sustainable value chains: implications for value chain analysis

Explores the degree to which UK based hotel groups had exploited the medium of electronic customer relationship marketing (E‐CRM). Research is incorporated that investigated their use of the Internet to verify whether customer relationship marketing was being implemented within online operations or whether their Internet presence merely revolved around the basic functions of “providing information” and “hotel reservations”. The findings and subsequent discussion showed that on the Internet, hotel groups used their relationship with customers to provide rather than gather information. The majority of the hotel groups had only embraced a few elements of E‐CRM and even indicated that they had no intention of being led online by the concept. Although the findings of the questionnaire indicated that hotel groups were generally aware of the potential of Web technologies and strategies, they also showed that companies were not putting this knowledge into practice when it came to implementing E‐CRM. Primary research concluded that hotel groups based in the UK were failing to take advantage of the many opportunities identified through the secondary research.

E‐CRM: customer relationship marketing in the hotel industry

Explores the principles of value chain management, as they apply to both public and private products, and explores the impact of e‐commerce and collaborative planning through the Internet on reducing costs and uncertainty in supply chains. Drawing on experience from global initiatives with e‐centreuk, and recent applications within Nestle UK, makes a plea for simplicity and standardisation in electronic commerce, to support speedy and certain value chain management across the globe.

The general principles of value chain management

A value chain is the overall set of internal and external resources – human, physical, financial and informational – that require to be marshalled and managed in order to achieve the objectives of any organisation. The management focus is on optimising net added value for the end-user, and for all of the key participants in the chain, through defining and managing the entire value chain from beginning to end, by enhancing performance, speed, certainty, safety and security at a low total cost, and at understood and accepted levels of uncertainty and risk.
This guide describes the processes of value chain management and says that it is vital that value chain management becomes a core component of all management education. Furthermore, all professional training needs a far greater emphasis on the ‘hard’ skills of managing internal and external resources in a disciplined way in order to deliver agreed, realistic results, rather than overemphasising soft skills that, however necessary, are insufficient to deliver cost-effective performance.
The failure to understand and employ value chain management results in worse outcomes at greater cost than need be.

Nick Wadsley

Papers

The general principles of value chain management

Value chain management: developing a more valuable and certain future